Mike Levin: “the basic principle of the Democratic Party has been economic growth with equity. The 1993 Deficit Reduction Act was…”

“the basic principle of the Democratic Party has been economic growth with equity. The 1993 Deficit Reduction Act was instrumental in promoting economic growth. Despite the overall growth, there were pressures on middle-income families, so this bill includes a child credit and also an educational tax credit and deduction. I support both bills. Let me say a word about the piece that I worked most on, the human resource piece. I supported the Welfare Reform Act. People on welfare should move from welfare to work. But when the President signed the bill he pointed out several inequities. One related to legal immigrants. He promised to work to provide benefits to elderly and disabled legal immigrants who should not have been penalized in the first place. I joined in that promise. Today we are keeping that promise. It is a much better bill in that respect than when it left the House. The President also promised to work for a welfare to work provision. We have kept that promise. There was an effort, though, in this House to penalize people who move from welfare to work, to treat them as second-class citizens, to withdraw them from the protections of Federal law in terms of wages, in terms of safety on the job. We have today, in this bill, repelled that effort. People who work are to be treated as first-class citizens, without discrimination.”